Position: 22 degrees, 27 minutes south; 177 degrees, 31 minutes west

Sea and sky. Never get tired of this view.

We launched our final rubber duckie. It has our blog and email written on it and we noted the Lat/Lon where we tossed it. Fun to see if anyone ever finds it.

A slow day. There’s not much wind right now, so we’re sailing in 6-8 knots of breeze at 4-5 knots boatspeed. Sometimes a little slower. It’s a little ironic that there’s so little wind right now because we’re likely to get plenty of wind in the latter half of this leg of the trip.

There’s talk on the radio of a tropical depression stretching from Fiji to North New Zealand this coming Wednesday. I’m seeing some heavy rain and moderate wind on the GRIB files, but don’t know what this might turn into at this point. I don’t think the water is warm enough yet to develop a cyclone-those usually don’t start until December, which is why we’re all leaving the tropics this time of year. Anyway, a big low won’t be any fun and we’ll hope to be south of it before it comes across this way. We should get a better read on its size and direction in the next day or so but at the very least it’s existence is likely to cause us to skip our planned stop at Minerva Reef and put some more miles in the bank to get further south by the time it’s due to come through.

Oh well, that’s part of cruising. Preparing for the worst and doing stuff to avoid it. We did a lot of work on Charisma in Nuku’alofa in anticipation of some tough weather along the way. We’ve got fresh oil and filters in the engine in case we need it in a crunch and the storm sails are rigged and hanked on all ready for high winds. We’ll take what we get, but seek to avoid the tough stuff if we can.

In the meantime, we’re enjoying some beautiful weather. The sunset was spectacular and the night is clear as can be. Some great stars and a late moon are up for our watches tonight. Here’s hoping there’s enough wind to enjoy them in peace and quiet instead of with the grinding of the diesel engine (although I’m not complaining mind you-life would be much tougher without our trusty diesel).

I almost forgot! We sailed through a pumice patch today. There’s a volcano somewhat around that’s throwing the stuff out. There were a lot of small pieces the size of a potato that alerted me to its existence, but finally I saw the patch. It was about 150 yards long and maybe 30 yards wide. Several actually and we sailed right through one of them. It’s just lots of floating pumice debris, most of which is about the size of pea gravel, but it’s very colorful. On a sunny day like today, the patch turned the water golden. Very dramatic.

Eight more days (more or less) and then New Zealand!